For economic and social reasons, many Afghan parents want to have a son. This preference has led to some of them practising the long-standing tradition of Bacha Posh - disguising girls as boys.

When Azita Rafhat, a former member of the Afghan parliament, gets her daughters ready for school, she dresses one of the girls differently.

Three of her daughters are clothed in white garments and their heads covered with white scarves, but a fourth girl, Mehrnoush, is dressed in a suit and tie.

When they get outside, Mehrnoush is no longer a girl but a boy named Mehran.Azita Rafhat didn't have a son, and to fill the gap and avoid people's taunts for not having a son, she opted for this radical decision.

IN the Morocco of the 1980s, where homosexuality did not, of course, exist, I was an effeminate little boy, a boy to be sacrificed, a humiliated body who bore upon himself every hypocrisy, everything left unsaid. By the time I was 10, though no one spoke of it, I knew what happened to boys like me in our impoverished society; they were designated victims, to be used, with everyone's blessing, as easy sexual objects by frustrated men. And I knew that no one would save me — not even my parents, who surely loved me. For them too, I was shame, filth. A "zamel."

Like everyone else, they urged me into a terrible, definitive silence, there to die a little more each day.

How is a child who loves his parents, his many siblings, his working-class culture, his religion — Islam — how is he to survive this trauma? To be hurt and harassed because of something others saw in me — something in the way I moved my hands, my inflections. A way of walking, my carriage. An easy intimacy with women, my mother and my many sisters. To be categorized for victimhood like those "emo" boys with long hair and skinny jeans who have recently been turning up dead in the streets of Iraq, their skulls crushed in.

The truth is, I don't know how I survived. All I have left is a taste for silence. And the dream, never to be realized, that someone would save me. Now I am 38 years old, and I can state without fanfare: no one saved me.

I no longer remember the child, the teenager, I was. I know I was effeminate and aware that being so obviously "like that" was wrong. God did not love me. I had strayed from the path. Or so I was made to understand. Not only by my family, but also by the entire neighborhood. And I learned my lesson perfectly. So deep down, I tell myself they won. This is what happened.

I was barely 12, and in my neighborhood they called me "the little girl." Even those I persisted in playing soccer with used that nickname, that insult. Even the teenagers who'd once taken part with me in the same sexual games. I was no kid anymore. My body was changing, stretching out, becoming a man's. But others did not see me as a man. The image of myself they reflected back at me was strange and incomprehensible. Attempts at rape and abuse multiplied.

I knew it wasn't good to be as I was. But what was I going to do? Change? Speak to my mother, my big brother? And tell them what, exactly?

It all came to a head one summer night in 1985. It was too hot. Everyone was trying in vain to fall asleep. I, too, lay awake, on the floor beside my sisters, my mother close by. Suddenly, the familiar voices of drunken men reached us. We all heard them. The whole family. The whole neighborhood. The whole world. These men, whom we all knew quite well, cried out: "Abdellah, little girl, come down. Come down. Wake up and come down. We all want you. Come down, Abdellah. Don't be afraid. We won't hurt you. We just want to have sex with you."

They kept yelling for a long time. My nickname. Their desire. Their crime. They said everything that went unsaid in the too-silent, too-respectful world where I lived. But I was far, then, from any such analysis, from understanding that the problem wasn't me. I was simply afraid. Very afraid. And I hoped my big brother, my hero, would rise and answer them. That he would protect me, at least with words. I didn't want him to fight them — no. All I wanted him to say were these few little words: "Go away! Leave my little brother alone."

But my brother, the absolute monarch of our family, did nothing. Everyone turned their back on me. Everyone killed me that night. I don't know where I found the strength, but I didn't cry. I just squeezed my eyes shut a bit more tightly. And shut, with the same motion, everything else in me. Everything. I was never the same Abdellah Taïa after that night. To save my skin, I killed myself. And that was how I did it.

I began by keeping my head low all the time. I cut all ties with the children in the neighborhood. I altered my behavior. I kept myself in check: no more feminine gestures, no more honeyed voice, no more hanging around women. No more anything. I had to invent a whole new Abdellah. I bent myself to the task with great determination, and with the realization that this world was no longer my world. Sooner or later, I would leave it behind. I would grow up and find freedom somewhere else. But in the meantime I would become hard. Very hard.

TODAY I grow nostalgic for little effeminate Abdellah. He and I share a body, but I no longer remember him. He was innocence. Now I am only intellect. He was naïve. I am clever. He was spontaneous. I am locked in a constant struggle with myself.

In 2006, seven years after I moved to France, and after my second book, "Le rouge du tarbouche" (the red of the fez), came out in Morocco, I, too, came out to the Moroccan press, in Arabic and French. Scandal, and support. Then, faced with my brother's silence and my mother's tears on the telephone, I published in TelQuel, the very brave Moroccan magazine, an open letter called "Homosexuality Explained to My Mother." My mother died the next year.

I don't know where I found the courage to become a writer and use my books to impose my homosexuality on the world of my youth. To do justice to little Abdellah. To never forget the trauma he and every Arab homosexual like him suffered.

Now, over a year after the Arab Spring began, we must again remember homosexuals. Arabs have finally become aware that they have to invent a new, free Arab individual, without the support of their megalomaniacal leaders. Arab homosexuals are also taking part in this revolution, whether they live in Egypt, Iraq or Morocco. They, too, are part of this desperately needed process of political and individual liberation. And the world must support and protect them.

Abdellah Taïa is the author of the novel "An Arab Melancholia." This essay was translated by Edward Gauvin from the French.

By LAURIE GOODSTEINA Ugandan gay rights group filed suit against an American evangelist, Scott Lively, in federal court in Massachusetts on Wednesday, accusing him of violating international law by inciting the persecution of gay men and lesbians in Uganda.The lawsuit maintains that beginning in 2002, Mr. Lively conspired with religious and political leaders in Uganda to whip up anti-gay hysteria with warnings that gay people would sodomize African children and corrupt their culture.The Ugandan legislature considered a bill in 2009, proposed by one of Mr. Lively's Ugandan contacts, that would have imposed the death sentence for the "offense of homosexuality." That bill languished after an outcry from the United States and European nations that are among major aid donors to Uganda, but was reintroduced last month.

In a post-communist country, where some people have a quite conservative viewpoint it is quite difficult to "come out of the closet." The small Eastern European Republic of Moldova is presently looking forward to joining the European Union one day. The acquis communautaire has yet to be implemented, but Moldova backs off from implementing the first requirement of the criteria which refers to ensuring "the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, therule of law, human rights including respect for and protection of minorities."

by Dan Littauer 15 March 2012Yesterday, homophobic hackers attacked Tunisia's main LGBT title, Gayday Magazine, taking over its email, Twitter and Facebook accounts.This comes after several previous attacks which hacked Gmail, Twitter and the main site, renaming account titles to 'Garbage Day Magazine'.

A new wave of emo youth murders in Iraq is expected to take place today March 11th and tomorrow the 12th.A list (pictured here) has been posted, naming future targets of emo youths to be executed in their respective districts (numbered). The note was posted, two weeks ago, in three neighborhoods of Baghdad: Al-Sadr City, Palestine Street, and Gayarah.Now a new list has been posted on Palestine Street. It was put up four days ago and warns men and women in universities and colleges to stop behaving and dressing 'immorally' within four days.

"We demand that the Iraqi Government put a stop to the wanton persecution and killing of gay people and that the perpetrators be punished."

- Cary Alan Johnson, IGLHRC

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission has today received reports from Iraq of a wave of targeted killings of individuals who areperceived to be gay or lesbian. According to Iraqi human rights activists, in early February 2012, an unidentified group posted death threats against "the adulterous individuals" in the predominantly Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad and Basra. The threats gave the individuals, whose names and ages were listed, four days to stop their behavior or else face the wrath of God, and were to be carried out by the Mujahedin.

By JOSH KRONKAMPALA, Uganda — At first, it was a fiery contempt for homosexuality that led a Ugandan lawmaker to introduce a bill in 2009 that carried the death penalty for a "serial offender" of the "offense of homosexuality."The bill's failure amid a blitz of international criticism was viewed by many as evidence of power politics, a poor nation bending to the will of rich nations that feed it hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.

Amnesty International has addressed a letter on February 23rd, to Samir Dilou, Tunisian Minister of Human Rights and Transitional Justice to express its alarm at statements he made about homosexuality in a television talk-show earlier this month.In summary Amnesty International call on Minister of Human Rights and Transitional Justice to:- Publically retract the damaging and discriminatory comments about homosexuality, and commit to upholding the human rights of all Tunisians as the Minister for Human Rights and Transitional Justice;- Urge the government to repeal Article 230 of the Tunisian Criminal Code which makes consensual sex between members of the same sex a criminal offence, punishable with six months to three years imprisonment.- Call for the principle of non-discrimination to be enshrined in the new constitution including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

There are reports that Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will veto an anti-gay bill recently introduced into parliament, if it is passed.By Melanie Nathan

The proposed legislation, which aims to increase the penalties for homosexuality to up to ten years in jail and to ban same-sex marriage in Liberia, was introduced by Senator Jewel Howard Taylor, who is the country's former first lady, in a country where homosexuality and lesbian relations are already criminalized.If passed by parliament, the bill would need to be signed into law by President Sirleaf, who was awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. According to the Associated Press, however, Sirleaf "has said she will not sign any such bill into law".Former Liberian first lady Jewel Howard Taylor has introduced a bill making homosexuality liable to a death sentence, amid a raging debate over gay rights in the country.The bill submitted by former president Charles Taylor's ex-wife, now a senator, also seeks to amend laws to prohibit gay marriage."No two persons of the same sex shall have sexual relations. A violation of this prohibition will be considered a first degree felony," reads the proposed amendment to marriage laws.First degree punishment can range from 10 years to life imprisonment to the death sentence, on the discretion of the judge.Voluntary sodomy is already a criminal offence in the west African country and can result in up to three years imprisonment, according to a lawyer consulted by AFP.George Tengbeh, a senator supporting the bill, said he hoped it would put an end to months of acrimonious public debate on gay rights."In an attached letter to the plenary of the Liberian Senate, Senator Taylor reminded her colleagues that the traditional beliefs of Liberia do not in any way or form mean the thought or action of a marriage between persons of the same sex."Even though this idea is totally unaccepted to Liberians, it is a glaring fact that same sex marriages are happening in the world at large," the Bong County Senator noted, adding that it is therefore incumbent upon the Senate as a guardians of the sacred heritage to insure that their generation leaves the nation in a better position than they found it.Taylor has dismissed the controversy around the bill, saying: "We are only strengthening the existing law."Her former husband, and the country's former president, Charles Taylor, is being tried for war crimes at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.TEXt of Bill and earlier article – http://oblogdeeoblogda.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/liberia-new-anti-homosexuality-bill-text-death-for-gays-and-lesbians/

MOSCOW — St. Petersburg's legislature passed a law on Wednesday aimed at eliminating what its backers called "propaganda" of homosexuality among minors, prompting fears among gay rights groups of an impending crackdown on their activities as other cities vowed to look into adopting similar measures.

The law, which follows similar legislation passed elsewhere recently, appears to be a reaction to increasingly vocal efforts by gay rights groups, particularly in St. Petersburg and Moscow, to attract attention to the issue.

Vitaly V. Milonov, the law's principal drafter and an outspoken proponent of Russia's Orthodox Church, who has referred to gay people as "perverts," has accused gay rights activists of waging an aggressive campaign of conversion among Russia's children with the backing of Western governments.

"This is a declaration of Russia's moral sovereignty," Mr. Milonov said in televised remarks shortly after Wednesday's legislative session.

Under the new law, which passed 29 to 5, "public actions directed at the propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism among minors" will be punishable with fines of up to $17,000. The law defines propaganda of homosexuality as "the targeted and uncontrolled dissemination of generally accessible information capable of harming the health and moral and spiritual development of minors," particularly that which could create "a distorted impression" of "marital relations."

Igor Kochetkov, the head of the Russian L.G.B.T. Network, a rights group based in St. Petersburg, called the premise of the law "absurd."

"You can also adopt a law against turning off the light of the sun, but no one has the ability to do this," Mr. Kochetkov said. "Even if someone wanted to, no amount of propaganda is going to turn a heterosexual gay."

He said he feared that the law could be used to prevent outreach efforts by gay rights activists, who have only recently become outspoken enough to attract attention.

"This is a law that can be used, and will be used, to conduct searches of organizations and prevent public actions," he said. "Most importantly, it will be used for official propaganda. Officially homosexuality will be considered illegal, something incorrect and something that cannot be discussed with children. It will create a negative atmosphere in society around gays and lesbians as well as our organizations."

Open discussion of homosexuality was almost unheard of in Russia until just a few years ago. A Soviet-era law that punished same-sex relations between men with prison time was repealed in 1993, but the subject has long remained taboo outside a smattering of bars and clubs in major Russian cities.

Attempts in recent years to hold gay rights rallies have been met with contempt and outright hostility from officials and religious groups, and have occasionally turned bloody.

But the issue has gradually begun to attract the attention of the Russian news media, including government-controlled television, which has occasionally given a platform to advocates of equal rights for gay people.

As often happens, passage of the new law has helped raise to the level of national discussion the topic it was meant to suppress. The legislation set off a media frenzy when introduced late last year, and has been the subject of boisterous debates on television.

In one debate on a popular political talk show, the law's opponents shouted down Mr. Milonov after he accused gay rights groups of "attacking" children and "trying to do them sexual harm." At one point, the host donned a rainbow flag like a cape, taunting another legislator from St. Petersburg who suggested banning such flags because of their association with gay rights.

International human rights groups and Western governments had urged legislators not to pass the law, and a few opposition groups in Russia have condemned it.

"I consider this law a provocation intended to divide society over a question that could have been used to teach people understanding," Aleksandr Korbinsky, an opposition member of St. Petersburg's Parliament who voted against the measure, said on Ekho Moskvy radio. "We need to help them become full-fledged members of society, not make them feel like second-class citizens."

Supporters of the new measure insist there is broad support in Russian society for laws meant to protect what they say are Russia's traditional values. In a July 2010 survey by the Levada Center, a polling agency based in Moscow, 84 percent of the 1,600 adults surveyed said they opposed granting same-sex couples the right to marry. The poll showed that 45 percent said gay men and lesbians should enjoy the same rights as all other Russians, 41 percent said they should not, and 15 percent were undecided. Eighteen percent said homosexuals should be isolated from society. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The new law is expected to face no opposition from St. Petersburg's governor, who must sign it before it can take effect.

Legislatures in Arkhangelsk and Ryazan have passed similar laws, and others have said they would follow suit. Valentina I. Matviyenko, the chairwoman of Russia's upper house of Parliament and a former governor of St. Petersburg, has suggested that the measure could be enacted on a federal level.

KAMPALA, Uganda — At first, it was a fiery contempt for homosexuality that led a Ugandan lawmaker to introduce a bill in 2009 that carried the death penalty for a "serial offender" of the "offense of homosexuality."

The bill's failure amid a blitz of international criticism was viewed by many as evidence of power politics, a poor nation bending to the will of rich nations that feed it hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.

But this time around — the bill was reintroduced this month — it is a bitter and broad-based contempt for Western diplomacy that is also fueling its resurrection.

"If there was any condition to force the Western world to stop giving us money," said David Bahati, the bill's author, "I would like that."

The Obama administration recently said it would use its foreign diplomatic tools, including aid, to promote equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people around the world. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain has threatened to cut aid for countries that do not accept homosexuality.

But African nations have reacted bitterly to the new dictates of engagement, saying they smack of neo-colonialism. In the case of Uganda, the grudge could even help breathe new life into the anti-homosexuality bill.

Antigovernment demonstrations sometimes turn violent and news about corruption scandals fills the tabloids here, but two things most people agree on is that homosexuality is not tolerated and that Westerners can be overbearing.

The United States says it remains "resolutely opposed" to the bill, and at the American Embassy in Uganda's capital, Kampala, officials are actively engaged in lobbying Ugandan policy makers to oppose the bill, too.

"Our position is clear," said Hilary Renner, a State Department spokeswoman.

The pressure has worked, to a certain degree. Some of the most contentious elements of the bill — the death penalty, and a clause ordering citizens to report known acts of homosexuality to the police within 24 hours — would be taken out, Mr. Bahati said in a recent interview. That could make the bill less explosive for lawmakers.

But the diplomatic tensions surrounding the bill also seem to be increasing its popularity.

"While covert behind-the-scenes donor pressure on the Ugandan government has been useful in the past," said Dr. Rahul Rao, a lecturer at the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy in London, "overt pressure can be extremely counterproductive."

The government of President Yoweri Museveni, while distancing itself from the bill, defended the right for the bill to be debated in Uganda's Parliament, saying in a recent statement that "cultural attitudes in Africa are very different to elsewhere."

Kizza Besigye, an opposition leader who has courted the West, said Western pressure on the issue of homosexuality was "misplaced" and "even annoying."

"There are more obvious, more prevalent and harmful violations of human rights that are glossed over," Mr. Besigye said. "Their zeal over this matter makes us look at them with cynicism to say the least."

When Mr. Bahati reintroduced the bill in Parliament, he did so to rounds of applause.

In this religious and traditional society, the tug of war between advocates and opponents of gay rights remains tense.

Days after the bill was reintroduced, a clandestine gay rights meeting at a hotel was broken up personally by Uganda's minister of ethics.

"In the past they were stoned to death," said the minister, Simon Lokodo. "In my own culture they are fired on by the firing squad, because that is a total perversion."

Last year, a newspaper published a list of gay people in Uganda and urged readers and policy makers to "Hang Them."

Much of Africa's anti-homosexuality movement is supported by American evangelicals, the Rev. Kapya Kaoma of Zambia wrote in 2009, who are keen to export the American "culture war" to new ground. Indeed, American evangelical Christians played a role in stirring the anti-homosexual sentiment that culminated in the initial legislation in Uganda.

The few gay rights advocates in Uganda who work publicly on the issue have seen their own exposure — and support — widen, too. One received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award last year. The organization whose conference was shut down this month receives tens of thousands of dollars from the American Jewish World Service, according to the organization's Web site. As for Mr. Bahati, orphaned at the age of 3 and until recently a relatively unknown politician, the past several years have been a roller-coaster-ride of emotions, from obscurity to fame and infamy. The American news media, he said, have shredded his reputation.

"They really worked out on the word 'death,' " he said, referring to coverage of the bill's death penalty provision. "We used to have friends in America, but most of them are now scared even to identify with us."

It was in the United States, Mr. Bahati contended, that he first became close with a group of influential social conservatives, including politicians, known as The Fellowship, which would later become a base of inspiration and technical support for the anti-homosexuality bill.

Mr. Bahati said the idea for the bill first sprang from a conversation with members of The Fellowship in 2008, because it was "too late" in America to propose such legislation. Now, he said, he feels abandoned.

"In Africa we value friendship," Mr. Bahati said. "But the West is different."

Richard Carver, who said he served as president of The Fellowship until August 2011, said members of his group were actively involved in Uganda, including one with close ties to lawmakers. But Mr. Carver said the group never took an official position on the proposed legislation.

"This is a very large group," said Mr. Carver, adding that "individuals can speak for themselves."

Mr. Bahati contends that African nations like Uganda, by contrast, cannot speak for themselves — that reliance on international aid makes "unindependent."

Nothing was more telling, he said, than Prime Minister Cameron's threat to cut development aid to countries that refuse to accept homosexuality. As for the United States, the State Department has pledged at least $3 million to civil society organizations working on gay rights.

According to Mr. Bahati, his anti-homosexuality bill would upend that. A clause in the bill prohibits organizations that support gay rights from working in Uganda, potentially including the development arms of foreign governments.

A parliamentary committee has 45 days to debate the bill before sending it back to Parliament or asking for an extension. Mr. Bahati said that he was confident the bill would pass, but that if it did not, he had a Plan B: hope for a Republican victory in November.

"The good thing with the West is that we know that Obama can influence the world only up to 2016," he said. "That's a definite."